Oh gosh, finally news that's got nothing to do with patents or smartphones or the comparing of male sexual organs. Haiku news! Michael Lotz has added preliminary support for WPA to Haiku, taking the first steps towards making the Haiku wireless stack a lot more useful.

Oh. I thought it was all about finding out who could be the biggest cunt.

Oi! You're a fuckin' sick cunt mate!

Its an Australian thing, it may not sound like it but its a term of endearment.

I'm not one, but I do love Jason Ellis(Jason Ellis Show on Sirius radio) and The Dingo(Danny and The Dingo snowboarding TV show, also frequent co-host of aforementioned radio show) when they go full on crazy outback mode together to the point you can barely tell what they're saying cause it's all in Aussie slang with a heavy accent.

Well, there is partial support for the AR9xxx series, those being AR9160, AR9280, and AR9285 based cards. I am posting from an AR9280-based card (SparkLAN WPEA-111N) that I installed in my laptop today just for wireless in Haiku. It seems to be working just fine in Haiku as I type this.

That said, the sources aren't up to date with the latest trunk of FreeBSD, so your concern is valid. The sources will likely be updated once FreeBSD 9.0 is final quite soon. That should bring in the additional drivers that you require. If you feel adventurous and build your own Haiku images, you could probably drag in the FreeBSD sources and edit the Jamfile in src/add-ons/kernel/drivers/network/wlan/atheroswifi accordingly to build the driver you desire. That said, the directory structure has changed a bit recently in FreeBSD, as Haiku still has a bunch of drivers in the AR5416 directory, whereas FreeBSD broke them out into the AR9001 and AR9002 directories to make things more sensical. Haiku will naturally follow suit when the newer sources are merged back in.

With regards to the intel_extreme, you may have the same issue as me with r42742 of Haiku, where there was a regression for some people (including me). I filed a ticket at http://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/8001 about it, but in the meantime just reverted the directory with the intel_extreme sources back to r42741 for the times that I build a new image.

I saw you left a comment in ticket 8001. I suggest that you check to see if things work after ticket 8001 is addressed. If you still have problems after 8001 is marked as fix, I suggest either replying again to ticket 7441, or else making a new ticket mentioning all of the specifics of your setup, and mention ticket 7441 within it to show correlation to your issue.

I used BeOS R5 professionally for years, and I really enjoyed both the OS in itself, and the kit api's. So when Haiku started up years ago, I was really happy to see a BeOS clone happening.

But now, 10 years later, it's still a LONG way from being finished, and it's now a hopelessly dated OS in so many ways, which will be even more true 10 years from now when it's presumably reached 1.0.

As a hobby OS developer myself I can totally appreciate the enormous amount of work involved. Alas, with todays extremely fast advances in hardware, useful OS's is not in the realm of small projects and tiny means.

Its cheaper than Windows, nicer than Mac OS, and more useful (on the desktop) than Linux....

Well, that's the problem. Windows ships with every PC (so essensially "free"), Mac OS X is certainly nicer than Haiku and - let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop.

It doesn't ship with every PC, even some major manufacturers like Dell and HP offer Linux preinstalled or even a bare hard drive, to save the cost of the license. And while the cost of the version of Windows bundled with the PC is absorbed in the sale price, the next major upgrade will be out of pocket.

Mac OS X is certainly nicer than Haiku

Well that's purely subjective. I absolutely love the OS X interface and all the cool little features under the hood. I feel exactly the same way about Haiku, and it's free. Granted OS X is pretty cheap these days, but it's also (officially) limited to Apple hardware so that's a negative.

and - let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop.

Again, that is subjective. While I've been enjoying what I've seen of Gnome 3.0 (now 3.2) as I get used to it on my netbook, I'm eagerly anticipating getting Haiku to properly boot on it. Right now I'm settling for a VM in full screen and it's working very well. But running it native will, for me, be a much more pleasant and useful experience than Linux has been, no matter the distro or DE.

I'm curious to know if you have had only limited experience with Haiku and the BeOS way of computing, or if you're an old hat going back to the R4.5 days like me. It really clicked with me back then, and to this day is still closer to my ideal interface and workflow than any other OS by far. I have my own ideas of how an interface should present itself to the user, and Haiku espouses a lot of those already.

Again, that is subjective. While I've been enjoying what I've seen of Gnome 3.0 (now 3.2) as I get used to it on my netbook, I'm eagerly anticipating getting Haiku to properly boot on it.

No, that's not subjective. Not properly booting, and then being without most of Linux's productivity tools while bringing almost nothing of its own, all make Haiku objectively less usable on the desktop than Linux.

Warm fuzzies isn't the most important aspect of usability. If it were, the Tamagotchi would be considered more usable than a Palm. In fact, warm fuzzies don't count at all, and although Haiku is more usable than a Tamagotchi, it's still mainly a toy OS.

I think you misunderstood me. The definition of subjective in this context means on a per-user basis, i.e. what the subject (you or I) think about it. For some people, usability means a command line and nothing more. For others, a minimalist GUI like Ratpoison addresses their exact needs regarding productivity. Still others require the OS to practically read their minds and move the mouse for them before they would consider it productive and useful. And there's a huge spectrum in the middle of all of that, where I think the various mainstream Linux interfaces, Windows, and OSes like Haiku fall.

And you're right: For me right now Haiku is not usable at all on my netbook. But it runs just fine on my desktop, and for the vast majority of what I use a computer for it serves my needs quite well. I don't do everything in it of course, but that's the same for Linux and Windows too.

So I stand behind my use of the word "subjective" in this context; for me it's a very productive OS, alpha stage be damned, for you and others it may not be. That's exactly what makes it subjective.

One more thing, and this is not a personal attack but an observation: Your analogy is grossly flawed. You may as well be comparing a remote control car to a jumbo jet. A Tamagotchi is an acutely simple game, that will never be more than a game. A Palm device is a pocketable computer designed for productivity, that coincidentally is more than able to emulate that Tamagotchi game. Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be intentionally slighting Haiku by calling it a toy, instead of correctly stating that it is an alpha-quality (read: buggy as hell) operating system. If Haiku were a "toy OS" as you stated, it wouldn't have any productivity functions at all.

I would not call Haiku good for everyday use in its current state (ie, it wouldn't replace Windows or a Linux distro for me), but I second your statement that "toy OS" is about artificial limitations. This expression could be used against something totally consumption-oriented like iOS, but not against an incomplete productivity OS like Haiku.

There's no analogy at play, so your I can't really take offence at your presumed observation. The Tamagotchi is a computer with severely limited use value, yet it's easy enough to interface with. I'm comparing one computer to another. Tamagotchi to Haiku, Palm to Linux. Unfair? Not quite: for most people using Haiku, Haiku is not the means to something else (productivity) but an end in itself (developing Haiku). That's pretty much the definition of playing. Or making art for that matter. So a toy. I don't see it as a pure negative, and I believe I used the words "still" and "mainly", "still mainly a toy".

Regardless, I still see it as flawed. Haiku's lack of usability at this point is solely due to its alpha state; the goal is and always has been to be a full fledged and productive operating system. That can never be said of your Tamagotchi; its sole intent is and always was to be a toy.

By your reasoning, all operating systems in existence are toys, as at some point in their lives they were alpha quality and barely usable by the general public. Would you consider OS X to be nothing but a toy? It is in fact quite a powerful and complete OS, though its first public release was hardly stable enough for everyday computing.

As for Haiku being "an end in itself" regarding its production state, again you're comparing an alpha state to fully released OSes. Coincidentally, you do realize that even those released operating systems go through active development cycles, wherein the current version of the OS is host to development? That's simply how it's done, certainly not an indication that an OS is flawed.

The definition of subjective in this context means on a per-user basis, i.e. what the subject (you or I) think about it. For some people, usability means a command line and nothing more. For others, a minimalist GUI like Ratpoison addresses their exact needs regarding productivity.

The context was delineated by the quote you addressed:

and - let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop.

"The desktop" seems to usually mean something fairly specific. Roughly: the typical stuff done by average users. CLI or Ratpoison-likes fall outside of this - people who insist on such UIs for ~desktop usage are a statistically insignificant niche (heck, Haiku in its current state is more suitable for "the desktop" than those two, despite quite clearly being "NOT currently more useful than Linux" there), there's nothing subjective about it.

"It doesn't ship with every PC, even some major manufacturers like Dell and HP offer Linux preinstalled or even a bare hard driver."

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Are you implying that what I said isn't true? Or just a hysterical laughing fit for no reason? Either way, visit those manufacturers' websites and you will see several models with the option to preinstall Linux or FreeDOS.

So, not everyone feels the way you do and I wanted to point that out. In short: So?

"I'm curious to know if you have had only limited experience with Haiku and the BeOS way of computing, or if you're an old hat going back to the R4.5 days like me."

If had the intelligence to read my post, you would have read the fact I was a professional R5 user for years, and I've used Haiku more thoroughly than some of the developers.

Well in my defense the post I replied to said nothing of the sort. This was the entirety of your words in that post:

"Well, that's the problem. Windows ships with every PC (so essensially "free"), Mac OS X is certainly nicer than Haiku and - let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop."

All three points I addressed. It wasn't until after I posted that I scrolled up and saw your original post where you spoke of your experience. My sincerest apologies for any perceived slight.

Haiku is too little, too late.

I'm sure a lot of people feel that way, and that's fine. I don't, and just as you did, I expressed my opinion.

Now move on.

No thank you, I'm quite content to stay and discuss this with others. After all it is a Haiku article. Beyond this paragraph, I'm going to refrain from discussing the fact that you seem to be quite proud of your opinion yet you arrogantly insist that others keep their mouths shut about it. It's douchebaggery at its finest, in my opinion.

""It doesn't ship with every PC, even some major manufacturers like Dell and HP offer Linux preinstalled or even a bare hard driver."

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Are you implying that what I said isn't true? Or just a hysterical laughing fit for no reason? Either way, visit those manufacturers' websites and you will see several models with the option to preinstall Linux or FreeDOS. "

I think... well forget what I assume about peteo's opinion and give my own. Your comment saying Windows doesn't come on *all* PCs is a bit like the person who protested about one of Samuel Johnson's generalizations.

Johnson: "There are no trees in Scotland."
Aggrieved Scot: "Yes there are! There's one not five miles from where I live."

The exceptionality of the riposte essentially supports the original generalization.

An ordinary consumer would probably never purchase a non-Apple PC that doesn't include a copy of Windows. They would have to:
a) know it was possible
b) care about the issue
c) actively decide they don't want Windows on their computer, and that they'll be satisfied with FreeDOS, Linux or installing an OS themselves
d) then search high and low for one

I might meet all those requirements. You might. A company's IT dept might. But 99% of the PC-buying public don't or won't. Which doesn't bode very well for a *consumer*-oriented home computer operating system.

Still I wish Haiku all the best and look forward to a 1.0 (or more likely for me, a 1.1) release.

Well, the guy made an absolute statement "every PC ships with Windows" and I was simply rebutting that. Absolutes are dangerous things in discussions, especially when they aren't true (which is most of the time).

Also, going with your anecdote we are all Scots here. We all pretty much know where to look for license-free PCs, and many of us build our own. The average consumer isn't likely to blindly wander into a Haiku discussion thread; using such a statement about Windows and PCs reeked of strawman tactics.

""It doesn't ship with every PC, even some major manufacturers like Dell and HP offer Linux preinstalled or even a bare hard driver."

HAHAHAHAHAHA."

Are you implying that what I said isn't true? Or just a hysterical laughing fit for no reason? Either way, visit those manufacturers' websites and you will see several models with the option to preinstall Linux or FreeDOS.

Oh come on. I'm from one of the places where such laptops were actually fairly popular, mostly due to economic reasons.

The purpose of FreeDOS was probably somewhere between smokescreen and formality, so that the machines with it won't greatly inflate "sold without OS" metrics, hence possibly exposing their major, serious manufacturer (HP...) to accusations of promoting piracy. You couldn't actually do on them anything a typical user would expect.

With Linux it was often even sadder... basically, it was rare to encounter something which would work as it "should" (not like anybody really tried, probably). The shipping distros often omitted important drivers (too often there simply were no good Linux drivers for some components in those "Linux machines"), I've seen cases where it wouldn't even bother trying to start X (not like it could); or "with Linux" being just a Knoppix liveDVD thrown into the box.

Virtually all of those machines ended up with pirated Windows.

You have probably noticed I'm using past tenses above - well, for some reason (better deals worked out between MS and OEMs? Very rapidly declining costs of HW, hence the possibility to mask OS license price, while still greatly lowering the overall price? Influence of trade organizations?) such deals virtually disappeared. They certainly don't show up on "best-seller lists" any more.

And yeah, now ponder how it influenced the long-time perceptions people could have about Linux...

""I'm curious to know if you have had only limited experience with Haiku and the BeOS way of computing, or if you're an old hat going back to the R4.5 days like me."

If had the intelligence to read my post, you would have read the fact I was a professional R5 user for years, and I've used Haiku more thoroughly than some of the developers."

Well in my defense the post I replied to said nothing of the sort. This was the entirety of your words in that post:

"Well, that's the problem. Windows ships with every PC (so essensially "free"), Mac OS X is certainly nicer than Haiku and - let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop."

All three points I addressed. It wasn't until after I posted that I scrolled up and saw your original post where you spoke of your experience. My sincerest apologies for any perceived slight.

Yup, keeping in mind other posts in the discussion (especially if they are... a grandparent post of the thread one decides to reply in) might be advisable, might even bring some curious or enlightening revelations - for example, here http://www.osnews.com/permalink?492174 you say:

Haiku's lack of usability at this point is solely due to its alpha state; the goal is and always has been to be a full fledged and productive operating system.
...
at some point in their lives they were alpha quality and barely usable by the general public.
...
As for Haiku being "an end in itself" regarding its production state, again you're comparing an alpha state to fully released OSes.

It seems to clearly indicate that you consider Haiku to be lacking in usability vs. some other OSes, and that it being a productive operating system is only a goal at this point. Perhaps also that Haiku is "barely usable by the general public" (even if those exact words apply "merely" to an analogy meant to be illustrative of the current Haiku state, not to Haiku directly)

So... you certainly curiously adressed the "let's face it - Haiku is NOT currently more useful than Linux on the desktop." opinion. Essentially sort of repeating it later, few posts down?

(and I'm writing this as one of the few who have BeOS in some warm place in their hearts for a decade+ ...but come on, give me at least a browsing experience which doesn't lag behind what's available on "big three" platforms; it would be a good start, considering how it's one of the primary "daily usage" types now)

You're blaming Windows for your own incompetence. Did you even think of renaming those files? Do you mean by "using Google" that you saved those files with Chrome? Wouldn't that be a problem with Chrome? Windows thinks that .tmp files are temporary files, and they are.

I don't think the OS is fighting you. Seems more likely you're looking for reasons to dislike Windows, instead of solutions for your problems.

You're blaming Windows for your own incompetence. Did you even think of renaming those files?

Why should you have to rename files simply to open them in a different program? That doesn't make sense. The file is judged by its name?

Windows thinks that .tmp files are temporary files, and they are.

Not necessarily. In this case they are HTML files. They should be identified as such and opened accordingly, regardless of what is in the filename. The name shouldn't have anything to do with the type.

The link between filename and filetype is a CP/M or MS-DOS thing. Early user-friendly operating systems refused to work this way because it was silly and confusing. That's one of the reasons why the classic Mac OS was so easy to use - you knew what type the file was, the operating system did too, you didn't need to tell it explicitly by filename and remember all the different suffixes for files to get them to open in the programs you want. I imagine BeOS and Haiku work in a similar way.

I didn't attack anybody, and on Windows, .tmp files ARE temporary files, doesn't matter what they contain, they are temporary files. This is how windows determines what app opens what files, by the file extension. If you do not know this, you have no right to be commenting on my posts, as you don't know how Windows works.

if he used a google product to save a file, and it misnames the file, how is that a Windows problem? You can try to blame Windows, but it was his browser that misnamed the files, and it was his inexperience that led to his complaint.

Windows uses the same naming convention as CP/M or DOS. It's a Microsoft thing. You obviously haven't used Windows, so I will stop typing, and hopefully you'll go back to drinking your Pabst and swirling your mustache.

Hopelessly, really? What are these amazing desktop OS developments which Haiku is hopelessly behind on?

Alas, with todays extremely fast advances in hardware, useful OS's is not in the realm of small projects and tiny means.

Extremely fast advances in hardware? Haiku is x86 only and yet it can run on modern cpu's from intel and amd. Opposite to your statement I see more and more consolidation rather than variety in hardware which means that there is less and less hardware you need to support. Note that I am talking about the desktop here, which is what Haiku is targeting.

Hardware accelerated 2d/3d graphics is certainly lacking, however this will likely be solved with gallium eventually.

I'd say software is Haiku's largest achilles heel. Not only is native software is extremely scarce but there's not a whole lot of ports for anything other than games. That is NOT an unsurmountable obstacle though as there is nothing technical preventing Haiku from enjoying ports of strong open source applications, just the lack of time/know-how amongst current porters. Applications like full-fledged browsers (Firefox/Chrome), productivity apps like LibreOffice, Abiword, Inkscape, etc. would quickly make Haiku alot more viable for day to day use.

Hopefully Haiku will attract more developers as users as that will likely pay off when it comes to Haiku's software repertoire, which also (I hope) means native software as it has a better chance of highlighting Haiku's strengths.

I agree with Peteo. I LOVED BeOS in the R5 days, it was a windows-alternative that worked WONDERFULLY out-of-the-box. At the time Linux still required editing Xfree86 conf files to get something graphical. BeOS was user friendly and lightning fast.

I too am saddened by the length of time it has taken to get even an Alpha release of Haiku out. In the decade plus Haiku has been in development, Linux has made some great inroads in terms of user-friendliness. Nowadays there's a GUI for everything in Linux, you really have to go searching for a distro that caters to hand editing config files (Slackware, Arch, etc.).

It's nice to see progress being made on Haiku, even if it does seem to be 5 years behind the times. What interests me is how INNOVATIVE and BETTER BeOS was than its competitors back in the day. Once Haiku R1 is officially released, I'll be EXTREMELY interested to see if that spirit of innovation and doing things better is carried on by the Haiku project.

Hopefully the process of Haiku playing catch-up won't last much longer. I'd much more interested in seeing BeOS evolve than simply be re-born.

Be warned if you have an older version of the HP 2xx series: So far I haven't been able to get Haiku to finish booting natively even with safe boot options. I haven't tried the most recent nightly builds as I've been on a long vacation, but I will be doing so soon.

For reference, mine is a Mini 210, originally with XP, GMA3150 video and without the embedded Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator. It's a single core Atom 1.6GHz machine. The newer revisions with Windows 7 do have the Crystal HD chip embedded on the motherboard. I don't think that makes a difference to Haiku, but there may be something else about the board that is different enough as I've read reports of it booting on those newer machines.

I have a Dell mini 10v and last time I tried it, it did run Haiku with the exception of Wifi. Not having it tethered to an ethernet cable might make it useful for me, especially with the 8GB SSD drive, Haiku should be a neat little OS for that machine.

CP/M: I finally managed to read the contents of my USB thumbdrive!! (leetness = over 9000)

-Seriously, someone make a European psystar (DMCA doesn't apply in Europe, with the exception of the UK), start making Mac clones capable of booting store bought copies of OS X, but not ship the clones with OS X pre-installed, so that we can finally get some reliable computing without having to shell an arm and a leg for Apple's Macs.

-Seriously, someone make a European psystar (DMCA doesn't apply in Europe, with the exception of the UK), start making Mac clones capable of booting store bought copies of OS X, but not ship the clones with OS X pre-installed, so that we can finally get some reliable computing without having to shell an arm and a leg for Apple's Macs.

You really don't need a Psystar. It's very easy to install using Nawcom's Modcd or Empire EFI.

I don't understand the hate either. This happens to Amiga threads too; people who have obviously never even seen an Amiga-based computer or used the OS will go in the thread and start bashing it as an outdated and pointless project.

I normally avoid the niche-OS threads for this very reason, but I felt compelled to stand up for one of my favorite projects and got trolled for it. Oh well...

There's plenty to bash with the present ~Amiga (as somebody who used the OS as far back as on A600, BTW; which was quite popular back then largely thanks to its great value)

All the duplication (triplication? Quadruplication?) while there's AROS, unremarkable hardware which basically strives to be unique* on principle and mostly just achieves horrible perks/costs ratio.

*Really, failing even that - a fairly similar hardware to current-gen consoles (millions of them; generally not bogged-down by slow productions runs, etc.) or Macs from 5-10 years ago (at least MorphOS seems to have realised that, it seems to target primarily old Macs now...)

Given that the die-hard Amiga users grew up with Commodore in charge of their computing experience, anything an Amigan WON'T put up with generally falls under the Geneva Conventions.

Or the overall veneration of the myths of Amiga approach, Amiga chips ...which, while giving impressive possibilities at the time, were arguably the leading causes of the stagnation and quick downfall.

Heck, if it runs on some current hardware, the Amithlon (killed by legal scuffles of course) is probably still by far the fastest Amiga at any given point in time.

All in all, glorifying what basically put the nail in the coffin of Amiga a decade+ ago (but, really, laboriously porting every OSS of note to this "totally unique" platform and basing present-day work flows largely on those packages)

I have an EeePC 1001PXD netbook and have just built the latest GCC4 build of Haiku with wpa_supplicant installed. Problem is, nothing happens. The network thing in the deskbar still says "No link" and, when I go to Network Preferences, it says "no networks found", in the Networks tab, even after selecting the wifi connection in the uppermost tab.

Does it simply not work, or do I have to manually configure it? How do I go about that exactly? The directions in the post are a little hard to understand, as far as how I run/use the ifconfig thing. Do I use the terminal? Is there an actual application called wpa_supplicant in the Applications/Preferences or something?

I have an EeePC 1001PXD netbook and have just built the latest GCC4 build of Haiku with wpa_supplicant installed.

Did you install wifi drivers for your devices? Due to licensing issues with wifi drivers and their firmware, many of them cannot be shipped in a "working" state with Haiku (blame your hardware manufacturers for this...)

So, if launch a terminal and run: "install-wifi-firmwares.sh" that should prompt you for the license agreements to download the firmwares.

If that still doesn't allow your wifi hardware to work, you may just be out of luck until a driver is available... you can always file a bug report and include the output of your hardware device listing.

The Ethernet portion of my system works fine. And the wifi portion shows up as a selectable option in the prefs, but it showing up doesn't mean it automatically works? So I still have to install a driver for it? Didn't realize that... will try what you suggested!

And the wifi portion shows up as a selectable option in the prefs, but it showing up doesn't mean it automatically works?

Interesting. I can't remember if my broadcom chip showed up or not prior to installation of the firmware. It may have, and simply failed to work.

So I still have to install a driver for it? Didn't realize that... will try what you suggested!

Not necessarily a driver, I misspoke. The firmwares. The firmware is what the driver loads onto the wifi chip before it can be used - basically it's the operating system that the wifi chip runs, and it doesn't come pre-installed. This is pretty much how every wifi chip works, and if you don't have the firmware, you're SOL.

Since the firmware is technically "software", and thus requires a license to distribute it, this produces a tricky situation for OS developers who want to provide drivers for the hardware.

And the wifi portion shows up as a selectable option in the prefs, but it showing up doesn't mean it automatically works?

Interesting. I can't remember if my broadcom chip showed up or not prior to installation of the firmware. It may have, and simply failed to work.

So I still have to install a driver for it? Didn't realize that... will try what you suggested!

Not necessarily a driver, I misspoke. The firmwares. The firmware is what the driver loads onto the wifi chip before it can be used - basically it's the operating system that the wifi chip runs, and it doesn't come pre-installed. This is pretty much how every wifi chip works, and if you don't have the firmware, you're SOL.

Since the firmware is technically "software", and thus requires a license to distribute it, this produces a tricky situation for OS developers who want to provide drivers for the hardware. "

Ok, I installed the firmwares (using a Ethernet connection)and then it saw our wireless network, but couldn't connect to it, because the net_server crashed or something. Disconnected Ethernet, rebooted, and now it refuses to see our network (or any wifi network, period). Says "No network detected", in the prefs, again. Weird.